Mass Bird and Fish Deaths in Arkansas a Cause for Concern?

Like the scene out of some horror movie, about 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead New Year's Eve in Beebe, Ark., littering the ground with bird carcasses. If that's not weird enough, over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of dead drum fish have been found floating in the Arkansas River, in an area about 125 miles from Beebe.

The folks at Jezebel joke that this is the beginning of a biblical plague, but scientists say the bird deaths were most likely caused by severe weather conditions, and the fish could also have died because of drastic weather or maybe just disease. Still, the last way we want to start 2011 is with creepy, mysterious mass animal deaths.